Should KU disband its campus police department? This petition actually demands it
Can you imagine a town of 25,000 — roughly the size of Prairie Village — choosing to dismantle its police department, just like that? Talk about a welcome mat for ne’er-do-wells.
Yet, that’s what 15 organizations and nearly 1,000 petitioners want the University of Kansas to do to its campus police department, in the wake of the unquestionably righteous protests following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The organizations include KU Young Democrats, Jayhawks for Bernie, Black Law Student Association and the Kansas City Democratic Socialists of America.
“Immediately dismantle the police services and patrol division provided by the KU Public Safety Office and cease all policing activities on KU campus,” reads a demand letter and petition from the organizations under the banner of “Abolition KU.”
“Prohibit any future funding towards the KU Public Safety Office’s policing division and redirect all funds to resources and departments with a focus on the well-being of Black students,” it goes on. “Disarm all security personnel operating on campus through the KU Public Safety Office. … Prohibit the Lawrence Police Department or any other local or federal police forces from entering on-campus housing or dining facilities without a reasonable, documented emergency.”
Adds one commenter, “We all know what the right thing is, KU. Be a school, not a prison.”
So it’s a no-brainer? I hardly think so. More like a non-starter.
This isn’t just defunding a police agency, it’s destroying it.
Making the idea even more foolhardy is the fact that more than 26% of undergraduate women at KU’s Lawrence campus reported unwanted sexual touching or penetration — assaults by any other name — since entering KU, in an Association of American Universities 2019 survey.
And KU Public Safety made a good case just a couple years ago that crime fell after beefed-up security on campus.
KU senior Paige Harding hails from Dodge City — another town with a population close to KU’s. As an intern at a law office there, she was gobsmacked by the amount of crime she saw running through the legal system in her hometown. Having walked across the KU campus after dark and before dawn, she has experienced the secure feeling of police officers driving by every few minutes. She couldn’t imagine life without it.
“The reason why I didn’t realize how much crime there is in Dodge City is because I didn’t have to see it every day,” says Harding, the president of the KU College Republicans. “These police do. As civilians, we don’t know what police officers have to go through.”
Fellow senior Izabella Borowiak-Miller, president of Turning Point USA at KU, a conservative student organization, actually argues for more funding for police, not less, in order to enhance training to ensure police not only protect students but preserve their rights.
Harding says she lives just off campus, and her neighborhood has seen multiple crimes in just the past two weeks, including thefts and even a car theft. She is crestfallen to see the current view of law enforcement across the country.
“We were showing so much appreciation for them” in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Harding notes. “And then in a matter of minutes, the whole thing changed. I think that most cops are good, and there’s no reason to abolish or defund the police. We’re already seeing higher crime rates in these cities that have taken action to defund the police or abolish the police.”
Harding also laments the unyielding tenor of the abolishment proposal: “I just think it’s really concerning how they use the word ‘demands’. It’s like they’re not even making room for conversation. It’s their way or the highway. That’s not how we do things in the United States. And that’s a mentality that we really need people to get away from.”
The good news is that an Aug. 14 statement from Chancellor Douglas A. Girod declares, “The University of Kansas has benefited immensely over the years from having its own on-campus public safety office, and will continue to do so.”
At the same time, even before the undated petition was launched earlier this summer, KU was forming a Task Force on Community-Responsive Public Safety to review KU Public Safety policies, practices and procedures, as well as best practices and ideas for change. Task force recommendations will go to the chancellor by November. Abolition KU organizer Azja Butler is even on the task force, and has expressed confidence in the steps KU is taking.
The task force will no doubt want to look into Abolition KU’s serious allegation that the KU Public Safety Office has a “history of mishandling sexual assault cases, racially profiling students, and cultivating an unsafe and unwelcoming environment for KU’s students of color.”
Here’s hoping they come up with policing improvements agreeable to all sides.
But dismantling the police? Not an option.
